Day four
finally saw us meet up with Ben Beattie, muskie fisherman extraordinaire and a
darn good outdoor writer. Ben has been guiding out of Moosehorn Lodge for seven
years, with a waiting clientele to book his services. We arranged this trip so
we could work around Ben’s schedule but unfortunately none when the muskie
season was open. So on this day we were going to try our luck on walleye, bass
and pike on Lost Lake, a small body of water just south of Lac Seul but
connected by water. The day started out dead flat calm, not the best conditions
for catching walleye, or most fish for that matter. After a slow morning, Jim and
I convinced Ben we should try for some smallmouth bass. We headed back to a
shallow bay, a spawning area for the smallies.

Jim with first jumbo

After working a couple shoreline
points we had two smallmouth in the boat, not an overly productive pattern so
far. We then tried pike fishing for a bit, with just a couple small fish to
show. Ben was scratching his head a bit, trying to figure out the next move
when the wind started to blow in earnest. Both Jim and I knew that given the
direction, those fish in that back bay might start to go now that a good chop
was blowing in along the shoreline were we had caught the smallmouth and some
small walleye. As soon as we got there, I knew the conditions were right!

I was pitching a
1/16 ounce plain lead head jig tipped with an Impulse brown ribbon jig leech, tipped with a medium live minnow. While I caught a few fish on the
straight jig leech, the addition of a live minnow really got the bite on the
go.

We started
pitching our jigs right next to shore, hooking fish after fish including
jumbo smallies, some decent walleye and a few pike for good measure.

All were
gorging themselves on mayfly larvae that had been moving to shallow water
because of the hot weather. This shallow pattern for the second day in a row,
once again provided some great springtime fishing action.